Souvenir (17 page)

It had been two weeks since the funeral, and when Clay thought of Addy, the first thing was, what am I going to do without you? He felt guilty that he thought about himself, and not her. But still, they had been a team, and now he was alone. When he’d think she was the lucky one, the guilt only deepened.

Clay walked out of the kitchen, reaching his hand out to a counter then to a chair, steadying himself while he navigated the linoleum as if it were a minefield. Traversing the breezeway off the kitchen, he opened the door to the garage. It was dark inside. He patted the wall to the right with the flat of his hand, feeling for the light switch. He rubbed the palm of his hand against the dusty grain of the unpainted sheetrock, sweeping it up and down as he held onto the handrail at the top of the four wide steps leading down to the garage floor. He found the light switch, and two bare bulbs lit up the interior of the garage. Next was the automatic garage door opener, a big red switch now easily visible. Flipping on the mechanism, it whirred as the pulley lifted the door with a series of grinding jerks. Rain splattered into the garage as he carefully held onto the handrail, planting both feet on each step before going down to the next.

The railing was another recent addition. Time was, he’d take these steps by twos, bend down and hoist up the garage door, pushing the weight up above his head like it was an afterthought. Now, he placed a frail, bony hand on bare wood, shuffled his feet on the scuffed steps, and prayed for balance. When did the simple act of starting the car turn into an ordeal, navigating darkness and depths as if he were walking underwater?

He opened the car door. A blue Saturn, two years old, a nice sensible car for an older couple. Roomy, easy to drive. It was the most boring vehicle he had ever been in, but that would probably have been his reaction to any new car. Other models might be fancier, but they were all the same. Plastic instead of chrome, digital readouts instead of dials. He turned the key and it started right up. Of course, the internal computer would make sure of that. No human intervention needed. No more tune-ups in the garage, changing your own sparkplugs or fiddling with the engine. Might affect the programming.

Clay let himself play through his usual list of complaints about modern life as he leaned his head back against the headrest. It gave him something to do while he waited for his breathing to slow down. Everything made him tired lately, and he was popping aspirin like candy for a headache that wouldn’t quit. Funny, but the thing he disliked most about new things is that they seemed to come along when he was too old to enjoy them, too set in his ways to make room for them in his world.

So who said life would be fair? The future is here, but the joke’s on you, you’re too old to enjoy it. Clay twisted his legs out of the car, holding onto the steering wheel with one hand and pushing himself off. He grunted, got halfway up, and lost his balance. His other hand flailed at the door beam, trying to steady himself, but the garage seemed to be falling down around him as he fell back into the car, hitting the side his head on the doorframe. It was a small whack, but he saw stars and the headache thumped inside his skull. He closed his eyes against the pain but it was too much, and he had to open them, afraid the room would spin down around him. But the walls stayed where they should. Steadying himself, he gripped the steering wheel with both hands, pressing his forehead against it. Fear flooded his body as he tried to breathe and relax. Calm down, don’t be an old fart about it. Tell it to the chaplain. Whaddy want, egg in your beer?

Closing his eyes again, he laughed, even though it hurt, but the memory seemed to drive the pain down a bit. Who drank egg in their beer anymore? He hadn’t seen an egg cracked into a glass of beer since before the war. Although everyone in the Army complained all the time, no one would show any outward sympathy. The usual response was to tell it to the chaplain, he might give a shit. Or, to ask what did you expect, an egg and a beer? The Army might give you one or the other, but to expect both was plain unrealistic. The first time he had heard that was in a line at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. Supply clerks were issuing uniforms and Clay ended up with a fatigue shirt too large and boots too small. When he complained, he didn’t get the correct sizes, he got, Whaddy want, egg in your beer? Move along.

Clay laughed out loud, oblivious to the pain. It was hilarious. That was his whole problem, in a nutshell. He wanted egg in his beer. Life was quite willing to offer up a nice, white egg now and then, and a cold glass of draft beer whenever he needed it. But no one was cracking an egg into his glass anytime soon. He could see what it would look like, a woman’s hand holding the egg, giving it a quick, sharp rap against the edge of the glass, opening it up one-handed and letting the yellow yolk plop into the beer and turn golden as it floated to the bottom, the egg white trailing it down. A gentle bounce as it settled in. He saw the glass raised to his lips, felt the foam tickle his nose as he drank and drank, gulping the beer and letting the egg slide down his throat as easy as can be.

Clay smacked his lips, imagining the taste, and then forced himself to open his eyes. There was no woman holding a white egg in her hand, no draft beer. He was leaning sideways in the driver’s seat of his blue 1998 Saturn, on a rainy Wednesday morning, his legs shaky and his head pounding, and he was about to drive to the hospital. No egg, no beer.

Pulling himself up, Clay sat still for a minute. His left leg was out of the car and his right jammed between the brake and the accelerator. He waited for his breathing to settle down and the pain in his head to recede, conscious of the need to get moving, unable to get his limbs to coordinate with his will. Once it was all smooth motions. Lifting a beer keg and carrying it up the basement steps. Making love. Doing pushups. Diving for cover and coming up shooting.

Stop it, he told himself. It’s only a fucking Saturn! He felt a surge of fury rise in his throat, frustration bursting out from the pit of his stomach, and he wanted to yell out to God, scream and damn him, but instead he beat the steering wheel with his fists, two, three times with each hand, hard, thumping it like a punching bag.

I used to dodge bullets, goddamnit! I jumped ditches and dug holes, I threw grenades, I shot people! Jesus H. Fucking Christ! I carried eighty pounds on my goddamn back through the snow, I jumped out of a fucking window two stories up, landed on broken concrete and ran like hell as bullets hit the street all around me. They couldn’t fucking kill me then so why the fuck am I like this now?

Clay’s hands hurt him as he ran out of words, but the anger pulsed in his head. He didn’t think he’d sworn like that in years, maybe decades, and he wondered if he’d yelled all that out loud or if it had all been in his head. Confusion fueling anger, he grabbed his pants by his right knee and lifted his leg, turning out of the car and throwing it onto the concrete floor next to his other foot. He wanted to propel his body forward, make it do all the things it used to do without a thought. More and more he could see himself separate from his body, cursing its uselessness, the fragility of old bones and thin skin his enemy, seeking to destroy him, every day a victory, every fall and each unsteady, shaky moment a battle lost, complete defeat not far down the road.

Clay had killed an old man once. He looked old, in any case, no telling what his real age had been. The Krauts had been dug in front of some small village, when they surprised them with a hidden machine gun that killed three G.I.s right off. The fire held them up, keeping them pinned and wounding two more men until Red called for artillery support. Mortars hit the German position as another platoon worked its way through the woods onto their left flank. Explosions churned the ditch where the Germans fired from and a direct hit took out the machine gun. Between mortar bursts, screams rose up from the ditch and were blown back into silence as the next rounds hit, throwing up red-tinged geysers of smoke and soil. Red called off the mortars as the two platoons blasted the Germans with rifle fire from the side and front, the other platoon firing right down the length of the ditch. It was nearly a full company of Krauts, no shortage of targets. They tried to pull out, but they couldn’t take the road into the village since there was no cover, and they’d be picked off. Instead, they took off to their left, over a small, low-lying field. They scrambled up a steep slope of loose, gravely soil trying to make it into the safety of the thick woods. Both platoons were firing at them as the Germans tried to find a foothold, their heavy boots digging into the gravel and long gray coats flapping as they slid back down, the brown, sandy soil, pebbles falling away beneath them. Some turned and fired back. Some raised their hands, but this wasn’t a day for prisoners. There had been too many ambushes like this, Krauts opening up on them, then surrendering after they’d been surrounded and G.I.s were dead and dying all around. This was revenge, and as long as there was running, firing, screaming and yelling, it wasn’t time for Kamerad, bitte, Kamerad, not yet. So the Germans kept clawing their way up into the woods, dropping their rifles and pushing each other up and into cover. The ones who made it kept going, crawling into the trees, no return fire. It was a turkey shoot. The platoons advanced, firing as they went, taking aim deliberately as they sensed their victory, their power over this mass of scampering sheep. Step forward, fire. Once, twice. Step forward, fire. Germans tumbled down, arms flailing, bodies jumping under the impact of the bullets. Finally they were only yards from the last of them. Clay had to stop to reload, and the slight halt to his pace and shooting broke the methodical killing frenzy. He wiped sweat from his face. Smoke and dust swirled around him as he watched one last German make it almost to the top. Clay was the closest to him, and he saw the German slide down a few feet, then start to work his way up again. The other members of the squad gathered around him and waited. It was like a show.

“Maybe we should take a prisoner,” Shorty said.

“Halt!” somebody yelled at the German. Rifles were raised, and other voices called out for him to halt. Clay looked at the men around him, and then he yelled halt too, feeling that somehow it would be wrong to shoot this last man in the back after he had survived this far, knowing what it felt like, that blind rush for cover, all the prayers you ever knew running through your mind, over and over. Heavenly Father… hail Mary, full of grace…now I lay me down to sleep…pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen, amen, amen.

But the Kraut didn’t halt, he held onto his rifle and used it to push himself up the gravelly slope. He was almost to the top when Clay decided, fuck it, he didn’t want to face this guy behind another machine gun at the next village. He should have halted, he had his chance. So Clay raised his M1, aiming square at his back, and squeezed off two shots. Bang bang. Two puffs of dust along the German’s spine, a spray of red, and he tumbled down the slope still holding his rifle by the barrel.

It was quiet, except for the clacking of small stones that followed the body down. No one spoke. They all walked over to the base of the slope, checking the pile of bodies for any signs of life. Clay turned over the German and the man’s helmet rolled off. His head was shaved close, but Clay could see by the gray stubble on his face he was an old man, too old for the infantry anyway. His mouth hung open, as if he had been gasping for air, winded by this last desperate bid for life. Clay could see his top row of teeth were gone. A really old man, gaunt, with thin, sunken cheeks, probably carrying his dentures in his pocket. The hand that gripped the rifle was blue-veined, bony, swollen knuckles looking huge around the barrel.

It was quiet in the garage. Clay looked into the mirror and saw the old man’s face, slack-jawed and surprised. He held up his hands, already bruising dark blue from the hits to the steering wheel. Rubbing them together, Clay felt the thick aching knuckles and could almost see them embracing the gun barrel. It took a second to sink in, for the memory to fade in all its perfect clarity and the confused, murky present to take center stage.

Clay felt the gravel give way.

Chapter Ten

1945

Under a full moon and clear skies they had walked most of the night. South, or as southerly as they could, detouring around icy ridges and steering clear of open spaces. You could read a book by that moonlight bouncing off the snow, and twenty dark forms moving across a pure white field would be seen by any Kraut with one eye half open. So Jake kept them in the thick woods, skirting open ground, off ridgelines where they’d be silhouetted against the night sky, moving south, moving to stay warm, moving to not stand still and feel lost and alone. As long as you’re moving, you’re going somewhere, and if you’re going somewhere, you aren’t lost, are you? So get a move on.

Sometime after midnight the wind picked up and what had been simply freezing cold became icy frigid bone-chilling cold. The snow glistened and cracked as the top layer frosted over, ice sparkles reflecting little pieces of moonlight like diamonds scattered over their path. Most of the men hung their rifles over their shoulder, warming their hands under their arms. Rustles of frozen cloth stirred up and down the line as they pulled and arranged what protection they had tighter, covering necks and faces, trying to keep the cold from blowing in and freezing the sweat that sheened their skin as they waited. Cold was the enemy now.

Jake stood next to a thick pine tree, shielding himself from the wind, waiting for Tuck to head back. Shorty, with his good eyes and few extra inches of height, had spotted something off to their left, up a small rise where pines lay on the ground, toppled by high winds, or axes, for a clear line of fire, firewood or a display of nature’s capriciousness. Shorty had sworn he saw camouflage netting strung up on poles. No one else could make out a thing, but Jake knew Shorty had once spotted a German sentry on a dark night, two hundred yards out, even though the guy was standing still. It took the eyes of an owl to do that, so when Shorty said he saw something, Jake believed him.